Logo text

Among the single most stalwart presences in American action cinema, Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s current occupation keeps him firmly entrenched in the genre he dominated for so many years — though this time, the screen is a bit smaller than what he’s used to.

The erstwhile Terminator leads the way on FUBAR, the Netflix spy series currently streaming its second season. (“C’mon! Stream it now!” a certain Predator-hunting Schwarzenegger might say.) The first year of the show focused on Schwarzenegger’s Luke Brunner, one of the best spies in the game, on the verge of retirement, only to get sucked back in when he meets one of the other best spies in the game: Emma, his daughter, played by Top Gun: Maverick star Monica Barbaro. If season one was all about getting Luke and Emma comfortable working in the same field as one another, season two is all about getting the rest of the family involved, whether they want it or not. 

Among those drawn into the picture is The Matrix icon Carrie-Anne Moss playing Greta, Luke’s former fling, not to mention former rival on the job. Long thought dead, Greta returns to the mix to chop it up with Luke, bringing two of the most legendary ’90s action figures together for the very first time. Below, Schwarzenegger and Moss open up about their shared time together on FUBAR season two, including their most notable action scene together — a tango dance ripped straight out of True Lies for the modern 2025 Netflix streaming viewer. But first, if you will forgive some self-indulgence… 

***

Thank you very much. It’s nice that you acknowledge that I inspired you, because now you’re doing exactly that with your [work], inspiring other people. Keep on going!

First of all, you always hope for the best. The first season was so interesting and so popular and was No. 1 for endless amount of time. I think that’s why Netflix committed to do a second season. I cannot take any credit for anything that you see other than when you see me acting. But not the writing and the story.

Maybe here and there, they will ask me. But the writers know what works with me. A lot of times writers, if they’re really good, will figure out that, “Nah, this line is not good enough,” or “Let’s come up with something funny.” They have a bunch of writers in the room, so someone always comes up with something good. If not, they say a lot of times to me on set, “If you have some additional lines you want to try, we can try those.” And I do that. With every movie, we do exactly that. But I thought they came up with a really great continuation of the first season because it’s always a challenge. You always go in just thinking about one season, and then you have to start all over again. And when they agreed to do a second season, they say, “Oh my God, where am I going to take this story?” That was why I was really delighted when Carrie-Anne came on this show of as No. 2. We had a wonderful time working together. I think the world of her, not just now after working with her, but also when I watched her movies in the past. I was very excited when she came on board and she became part of this.

Getting to work with Arnold was epic for me. You saying all of that, it’s so moving. I have kids. I have a 16-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 22-year-old. It’s amazing to think that you inspire people. I mean, that’s why I wanted to be an actor as a little kid. I wanted to be an actor when I was 6 watching TV and all the different shows. I wanted to be part of that. So to have that reflected back to me, I appreciate. I had the best time. I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun on a job working with Arnold and doing the dance stuff and the fight stuff and then all the acting, and then the sitting between takes and talking about all kinds of things. I loved every minute of it.

You’re absolutely correct when you talk about the show’s ’90s style. In True Lies, we had some great dance sequences. It played so well then, we thought it would play well here, too. It really was great to rehearse and prep it. The key thing with all of this is that it has to look natural. It cannot be forced. It is because we rehearsed and really prepared that we were able to do it in a very relaxed and very organic way. The big challenge is not just to pull off the dance sequence, but to pull also pull off all the dialogue because you have four pages of dialogue during this dance sequence.

So you have to say the lines exactly at the same time when you make a certain move. You have to stick with that because otherwise it doesn’t edit together. So that was the really challenging thing. Because we did it so many times before we got to the set — she believes in practice, I believe in practice and in reps — so we were able to do that and at the same time have a great time. Then of course there comes the other challenge: at one of the dances is all of a sudden a fight. Now you’re choreographing a dance with a fight with the brutality, the guns, the action. It becomes very, very tricky, but great writing.

Every time I would see Arnold, we stayed in the same hotel and we were practicing. I’d see you and be like, “Shall we?” I couldn’t see him without thinking of that. Prepping the dance was such a big part of what we were doing.

 You did a really good job with the accent! You had to have a kind of Eastern European accent, which I know was a real challenge.

No. I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t want her to sound like me.

I wish I sounded like you.

You can really tell she’s done a lot of action movies because she’s so familiar with the choreography. She’s in great shape and very flexible. I remember this one scene where we had unbelievable action. It was an endless amount of soldiers coming in and they were attacking us, and then they wanted her to go and give a kick to this one guy in the face. They said, “Can you reach up and do this? If not, the stunt woman can.” And [Carrie] says, “Well, let me try.” So we went through the action. Then all of a sudden, the soldier came in and she just leaned sideways, boom. And it was thisclose to the face with her foot. The stunt coordinator said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, I think she can do it herself.” I was blown away by that. You save a lot of time because you don’t have to rehearse and rehearse, you just really get right into it.

MOSS I love the action. I really do.

You’ve had such a versatile career but is there something about the action genre that calls you back, Carrie?

MOSS I love to tell stories with my body, I guess. I grew up dancing. I was a Scottish dancer, which is kind of an unusual thing to do, but I just love physicality. As I’m getting older, I feel even more inclined to want to access that power and have that ability to continue to do it, and maybe get better at it. I’m inspired by Arnold and other action stars that I really look up to. I never in a million years thought I would ever be an action actor, but I really love it more than I would’ve ever imagined. I love the challenge of it. It’s so hard. The practicing of it is so hard. And then on the day of shooting, it’s so much easier than what you have to think about. In the moment, the adrenaline hits but then you hurt so bad afterwards, you’re recovering for weeks. But the athlete in me, the dancer in me loves it.

Arnold, as I mentioned earlier, you’re a fixture in a lot of moviegoers’ lives. Here with FUBAR, you’re still at it, but in the new venue of the streaming model. Looking at your career from this vantage point, what are some of the ways you feel the genre has changed the most from when you started?

SCHWARZENEGGER Let’s start with one thing that hasn’t changed, which is you need to have the right female lead as we have with Carrie. And I have been very fortunate here. I always say I’m not a self-made man. I’m the product of so many other talented people around me that helped make me shine, and one of them is how fortunate I have been to have so many female heroes around me like Linda Hamilton and Jamie Lee Curtis. If we hadn’t had Jamie Lee Curtis, True Lies does not work. She was the right person at the right time, the right dynamic. That’s the same thing here. The people really loved the dynamic between me and Monica in season one, and when we started showing people FUBAR 2, they really loved the dynamic between me and Carrie. I do not take any credit. It was the writers’ idea and Netflix’s idea. But I just think it’s so important to have the right female lead.

The biggest thing that has changed? Visual effects. As you know, there are movies being made now where you can really show so much more. I wish we would’ve had the visual effects in Conan the Barbarian because then we wouldn’t have had to take this Oliver Stone script and cut it down. John Milius did such a great job cutting it down from an $80 million to $20 million movie. We are talking about the ’80s, which today would be a $150 million budget. But the bottom line is that we could have shot The Tree of Woe, we could have the giant snake, we could have all of these things that Robert E. Howard wrote in his novels and that Frank Frazetta painted in his paintings. We could have done that with visual effects, but it was not available then. That area is something that I wish we would’ve had way back. There is a big change that has happened in the last few decades in that direction.

Well you’ll just have to make King Conan and get a second chance at all of that, right?

SCHWARZENEGGER Yes, absolutely. We are looking forward to that.

***

FUBAR season two is now streaming all episodes on Netflix. Read THR’s profile on Schwarzenegger for season one.